5/13/2010 @ 6:00PM

New College Job: iPhone Repair Shop

Not long ago, college students with an entrepreneurial streak ran their campus laundry service or sold used textbooks. These days, the proliferation of smartphones has spawned a new campus job: iPhone repair shop.

California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) is home to what may be the first such business. Fourth-year student AJ Forsythe founded the company in January 2009, dubbing it iCracked–a play on the iPhone name and the device’s tendency toward cracked screens.

Forsythe says iCracked, which he runs out his San Luis Obispo, Calif., home, is profitable, pulling in $1,200 to $1,500 a week after expenses. Within the next six weeks, he plans to incorporate the business in California and expand iCracked to Texas and, later, the East coast, through a franchising model.

Forsythe, who is 22, got the idea from his own iPhone accidents. “I broke my phone one too many times, tried fixing it myself and then realized I could make a good profit,” he says. It makes sense. College campuses, with their tech-savvy residents and numerous parties, are a hotbed for iPhones and phone mishaps. And students, with their tight budgets and busy social lives, have a particular interest in cheap, fast iPhone repairs.

ICracked charges a flat fee of $75 to fix iPhones–less than half of the $200 that
Apple
charges. It also promises same-day service and stays open until 8 p.m. Apple, in contrast, requires customers to send in their phones, making the repair process span several days.

ICracked also takes cues from the school-year schedule. In March the company ran a “spring break special” that dropped repair fees to $60 for two weeks. “I figured a lot of people might have had too good a time on vacation and broken their phones,” says Forsythe. To foster loyalty, iCracked gives repeat customers discounts.

Like other campus businesses, marketing has centered on word-of-mouth buzz and posting fliers. With an eye toward growth, Forsythe also established a Facebook page and invested in a Facebook ad that he says has been shown more than 2 million times in the San Luis Obispo area. In April he registered a Twitter account (@i_cracked) and in early May, he set up a toll-free number.

The ramp-up is part of Forsythe’s bid to take iCracked nationwide. He is also building a website, at www.icracked.net, and spending the summer in Dallas, where he hopes to establish several franchise locations before returning to Cal Poly in the fall. (Forsythe has one more year of college because he is pursuing two bachelor’s degrees, in biology and psychology.)

“Texas is a great place to start out,” says Forsythe. “We think we can get a lot of Dallas-area students excited about the iCracked idea.” He plans to oversee training, supplies, marketing and IT for franchisees. They, in turn, would pay a monthly fee for these resources and the right to use the iCracked brand.

To fund the expansion, Forsythe is trying to recruit angel investors. He says he has talked to three to four prospective investors so far.

Under this model, Forsythe believes iCracked could stretch to the East Coast by the end of the year. He also wants to add support for other gadgets, including laptops and tablet computers. When he runs into questions, a board of advisors, which includes a Cal Poly English professor, a local business consultancy and his father, a Boston-based businessman, advises him on strategy. The startup currently employs four people, but will probably increase to 10 in the next few months, says Forsythe.

Kyle Wiens, co-founder of the gadget repair company iFixit, says iCracked is proof that young people can get into repairs without formal training. “People on campuses are doing micro repair businesses,” says Wiens. “ICracked figured this out on its own.”

Forsythe says he spends about 25 hours a week working on iCracked. “I have bigger plans than most of the local, iPhone fix-it places,” he admits. If he succeeds, iPhone repair may be the next big thing on campus.